Runic Bouncing
by Aoi Shinkaze
Summary: So the world ended. Or it would have. Or it might. Anyways, tapping into too much magic left Harry half insane, so he plans to go back in time and meld with his 11 year old mind to cure his madness and fix everything. Or most things. Some things. Okay, he'd be happy with just Voldemort being dead.
1. Bouncing Back

I know I said I wouldn't start any new stories until I had finished one, but this plot bunny wouldn't stop bouncing around in my brain. That said, I don't own Harry Potter, even if I wished to.

* * *

Harry frowned, juggling at least eighty different calculations, constructing five runic circles while maintaining his hold on _four thousand_ others, and chewing on his toast. He tried to mumble something to Hermione, who was standing nearby but not too close, but she just rolled her eyes as he only sprayed toast crumbs over a circle. She would have Vanished the crumbs, but as Harry had told her a week ago, if she did that the entire British Isles would probably be vaporized by the magical backlash. She would have been skeptical of Harry raising that much magic at one point in her life, but after five years of being on the run with only a ragtag bunch of misfits to accompany them, she and Ron had become intimately familiar with just how _much_ magic Harry could command. So she watched as Harry casually created a runic circle to annihilate the bread crumbs before returning to his work.

"I repeat, do you want or need any water? Also, should you _really_ be eating now?" Hermione frowned disapprovingly at Harry. The man hadn't slept once in the past ten days, and if not for his inherent magic itself supporting him he would have collapsed five days ago. Maybe. Probably not. Maybe three days ago. Anyways, the _point_ was that Harry would probably have killed himself making these runic circles if not for his own vast magic. Maybe. These days, especially the last ten, Hermione hadn't been sure _what_ exactly Harry was capable of. Not since they were the last remaining sane wizards on the planet.

"No 'Mione. I'm sure I'm fine. Or I will be. Or I have been. Merlin that gets confusing." He grinned at her, just as he always had in their school days, and she couldn't help but smile back, even as the five circles Harry was working on snapped into place, then shrunk and joined the multitude at Harry's waist, encapsulating the man in a vast circle of his own, four thousand, five hundred and ninety- three miniature circles around him. Harry grinned wider as the entire ramshackle hut they were in rattled. "Looks like Tom _finally_ caught on to our hints. You think he was happy with that box I stuffed him in?"

"Honesty Harry, with how blasé you are with this whole situation I'd think you weren't in immediate fear for our lives." Ron tossed his comment across the room, seemingly unbothered by having been deposited on the floor by the sudden lurching sensation.

If possible, Harry's grin seemed to grow, until it looked slightly deranged. If she was honest with herself, Hermione couldn't blame Harry for that. "Maybe I _am_ blasé, Ronnykins. Maybe I'm leading us all to our deaths!" Ron and Hermione flinched slightly at the moniker for Ron that the Twins had favored spilling so casually from Harry's mouth. The man looked pale and stricken as he took in their faces. "Merlin Ron, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it."

"I know you didn't Harry, you were always closer to them than we were." Ron, who had looked cool and confident, as confident as you could look in a hut under attack by the last insane wizard left alive, now looked like death warmed over. Hermione shook a little as she saw the desperate longing in Ron's gaze. The war had touched all three of them, and it had taken a little something from each of them as it left.

* * *

 _Harry shouted over his shoulder, but his words were snatched by the wind, and he couldn't tell if anyone had heard him. It didn't matter, anyways. Good ol' Voldy had found them, again, still somehow tracking Harry, and Harry alone. With the rest of the world nothing but ash and dust, Voldemort seemed single mindedly focused on erasing Harry from the map, and Harry wasn't quite keen on that yet, especially if it left his friends without a buffer between them and Voldy._

 _Not that they weren't competent, of course, but few wizards were capable of dueling Voldemort to a halt in the old days, and those days were long gone now. Voldemort had somehow found and bound a phoenix to him. The only respite Harry and his friends got were when Voldemort was torturing the phoenix, using its tears to heal his body and coax his soul shards back from the dead. This, of course, meant that Tom Riddle became drastically stronger with each soul shard, as instead of hiding them and being immortal, Voldy reintegrated the shards into his soul,_ vastly _increasing the amount of power he had on tap._

 _Needless to say, Neville had not expected to face the full fury of the last of the Slytherins alone one day. Hermione had wanted to erect a headstone, or even a little stick, anything to remark Neville's passing, but Harry knew better. He could still_ taste _the tang of Voldemort's power around the spot where Nev had died. To get too close would mean death. The worst part was that, even now, Harry wasn't facing the "full" might of Voldemort. Tom could have been so much more if he hadn't torn his soul in half at sixteen. That had forever stunted his magical growth, cutting off his magical puberties at the extremely young age of twenty seven. Normally, for those like Harry, Voldemort, and Dumbledore, their magic underwent what really ended up being a gigantic growth spurt, and had been jokingly termed puberty. In fact, all wizards and witches went through the process at least once, which is why the name stuck. Except for those who had more power at their disposal, the puberties kept coming, more and more, until right before the wizard or witch's death, they were considered all but a God._

 _That had been why Dumbledore had been so successful against Grindelwald. The Dark Lord may have been powerful, but he was never going to be as powerful as Dumbledore. Albus had apparently turned an entire hill into glass at one point in the duel, shattered it into shards, ignited the whole lot of them and then sent a tornado of molten shards of glass at Grindelwald._

 _It was a miracle that the Dark Lord had survived that battle._

 _And here Harry was, wand flickering as he called up dozens of circles to protect himself and anything behind him, which could be one friend or twenty. He didn't know anymore, and as much as he didn't want to know anymore, he had to. The bifurcated corpse of George Weasley, and Ron's broken expression over it, however, did not elicit the response that Voldemort wanted in Harry._

 _Harry_ roared _, and every stone within a thousand feet turned into_ dragons _. Considering the gale Voldemort had sent their way, there was not many left. Mostly boulders. That made the sudden appearance of twenty full grown Hungarian Horntails all the more frightening. The column of flame that torched the ground where Voldemort stood was hugely satisfying. He turned back to Ron, just in time to see the red head about to kill himself._

" _Ron! No-!"_

* * *

"Ron, don't you fucking give up on me now. I've been up for _ten days_ making this sodding ring of runic circles, don't you fucking _dare_ to kill yourself now, do you hear me?" Harry's glare seemed to cut through Ron's trip down memory lane, and the sudden feeling of standing next to a brewing thunderstorm helped speed Ron's return to sanity. The sudden smell of ozone, the results and signs of Harry's magic being pulled into physical being, shocked Hermine and Ron out of their trance and into full attention. For Harry to manifest his magic…He had done that once before. Only once. And the entire planet had quaked with his rage.

This was not an overestimation of Harry's power. Being one of the very few people graced with more than two or three magical puberties, Harry had a grasp of magic so intuitive that he could actually hold over _five thousand_ simultaneous runic circles in place, each with different outcomes and results, without sweating.

This is of course, amazing, as in general, seven fully trained Celtic druids generally balked at the thought of activating more than _one_ runic circle at a time. Actually, it was impossible, but Harry didn't let little words and laws of magic bind him. Which, in general, they did not for wizards of his class, which had nothing to do with society, and everything to do with magic. His magical power made him a Mage, and his destiny made him a Lord. On top of that, he was a Child of Prophesy. All of this combined with being a half-blood, which generally meant a bit of the inbreeding from pure-bloods could be mitigated, Harry had enough magic that by the time he was twelve he could face a Basilisk without being crushed by the King of Snake's death aura.

And now, he was indeed holding up four thousand nine hundred runic circles, almost without blinking. Yes, he had to do the arithmantic calculations in his head, but he was still capable of that. Honestly, time travel would be a blessing. It would, theoretically of course, let his present mind and magic meld with his eleven year old form. The resulting magical burst would be catastrophic for anything nearby, if not for something he and his friends had discovered. Past a certain point, muggles couldn't feel magic. Oh if someone cast a tripping hex they'd be able to feel the tug coming from nowhere. But a magical explosion that releases a beam of escaped energy high enough that it reaches space? Not a flicker. The earthquakes set off by that insane amount of energy released nearby, they would notice all right, but the actual merging of souls? That was beyond muggles.

Harry sighed, and then winced as all three heard his outer set of wards come crashing down. "Well, looks like time is running out, Ron, 'Mione." He twirled his wand, and the last hundred circles slotted nearly into place, each shining like a small light bulb. He turned, slowly, to face his two oldest friends left alive. Well, the only two people left alive he cared for. Well alright, there really was only himself, Hermione, Ron, and Tom left alive of humanity.

"I thought of something." He started hesitantly, and when he wasn't shot down instantly, he asked them if they would consent to having their memories transferred to their little bodies. Hermione seemed reluctant, and Ron seemed, hungry, somehow. Harry then realized it was the hunger of seeing his family, especially the Twins, again, alive and well, that made Ron look like Sirius had after escaping Azkaban. Not the same emotion, but the look of raw, naked _hunger_ made the sane part of Harry's mind want to curl up and cry for hours. The insane part, of course, merely winced. He wasn't that far gone. Harry wasn't even as far gone as Hermione. She was, amazingly, even worse than Ron. The war, especially these last few months, had twisted Harry's sanity, but it had taken most of Ron's and left only shreds of Hermione's.

Hermione, after about ten days of sitting still, screamed. The sound was like nails on chalkboard, and Harry never got used to the suddenness of it. It was always enough to snap Ron out of his funk, generally as it was fueled by Hermione watching Ron sink into his demon's waiting arms, and merely surrendering to her own. Harry lazily waved his wand in Hermione's direction, and she was instantly Silenced. He merely tipped his head at her, and the smell of ozone was back. Each time Hermione snapped, it had taken weeks before she calmed down again. None of them had the time.

Funnily enough, the threat of imminent death seemed to break Hermione from the clutches of her demons, whatever they were. Harry could read her mind, but the way she had asked him not to told him the demons were her own mind defenses, turning on her. A gift of Tom's, no doubt. As they were now, Ron, slipping into a sea of madness, Hermione, already there and struggling to not drown, and himself, Harry, holding on if only to see the three of them smiling and happy once more, none of them were ready for combat. 'Mione and Ron, he knew, would jump in front of Killing Curses in a heartbeat, even if he conjured marble to protect himself, They wanted a way out. Anything to end the pain.

And that would break him, he knew. And then, he would probably do what he had sworn to never do again, and tap all of the ley lines in the planet. The last time that had happened, well. There was a reason the Earth had no habitation besides the four of them any longer. Harry giggled in a corner of his own mind, picturing the Earth as it sailed ever closer to the Sun. His rage had knocked the planet out of orbit, and it was steadily accelerating as it hurtled toward the Sun, and annihilation. They were already past Venus, and approaching Mercury. The heat had killed some things, but it was mostly the lack of water. Well, maybe it was all the heat. Magical animals had held out for longer than the rest, but without a steady ley line network like the one they had had for centuries, which he had disrupted, the magical animals died off soon as well. Oh well, lightly flambéed dragon steak had tasted great for a day or two.

Oh, right, there the tosser was again, knocking on their front door, so to speak. Harry twitched as the second set of wards fell, and Voldemort attacked the inner, and last wall of wards. Time to finish up quickly then. "I won't bring you guys back if I'm as insane as I am now. I don't need to deal with Voldemort _and_ my two suicidal and psychotic best friends." He knew it was callous of him, but he gave them the choice. They both nodded, and he pulled out an exact copy of tier memories. Well, not a copy, he just pulled their memories out of their brains.

Hermione and Ron dropped to the ground, as dead as they had ever hoped to be. Harry sincerely hoped the ritual would work as he had intended, as he didn't want to go through life not only half insane, but also without his best friends. He called up twenty thousand other runic circles at once, only showing the strain now as twenty-five thousand simultaneous and continuous circles drained his magic. If not for the extremely crude rituals he had done to expand his magic, Harry would have been long dead form the magical expenditure.

As he felt the last wards collapse, he smiled bitter sweetly at the dead bodies of his friends, wishing he could die beside them. But no, he had sworn a vow using Magick that he would kill Voldemort. If he needed an extra decade or so, who could complain?

Harry let the control he had on the inner ring of carefully constructed runes go, watching as hundreds of hours' worth of effort crashed into him, and he felt his body slowly disappearing. Just before the magical font erased him, however, Harry released control of the Cataclysm circles. He had used the strongest circle he knew of that led to only destruction and nothing else. And he had woven and created twenty thousand of them. One would be sufficient to make a volcano erupt. All of them? Channeled as an explosion? The Earth was wiped out by an eruption of magic so huge all of its ley lines had to be called on to support, until they too were shredded by the magic, making the explosion larger by five orders of magnitude as each line detonated.

Harry had a brief moment to enjoy this, and also the sight of Voldemort's last expression being of extreme confusion and shock, before the magic took hold of him and transported him far, far away in time.

* * *

Wow, that got away from me at the start. It was never going to be this dark, it sounded so nice in my head. Oh well, I like it.

Sorry that it's so exposition heavy :/


	2. Bouncing Around

I hope my muse can keep up with how awesome I feel over writing again.

Onwards!

* * *

Surprisingly enough, there was no pain accompanying Harry with the travel through time. He expected a great deal of it, but it was not to be so.

Harry was very shortly disabused of that notion when his mind and magic slammed into his eleven year old self, and he realized that the lack of pain was not due to there being no pain, but that his mind was not hooked up to any pain centers. So he screamed as the force of magic he had unleashed came back with him, his eleven year old and just only marginally developing magical network and core suddenly inundated by his twenty five year old magical network and core. Well, if he screamed no one heard as the precise moment he opened his mouth to scream, a blast of magical energy shot out of his body, excess form the time travel and what his body couldn't handle.

An interesting thing about magic was that, in great enough quantities, it could not be felt by muggles. And even more interestingly, in even greater quantities, you had to be Mage or Lord class to feel the magic, and no ordinary wizard would feel it. So the magical shockwave was only experienced and felt by young Harry Potter. Well, at least his body was young. His mind…not so much.

Though Harry felt a sudden wave of nausea, originating from his scar. He decided that he would rather not tote about this soul shard of Voldemort's, and by swiftly waving his wand, he generated around fifty circles, then judged that to be too much and wiped away ten. The remaining forty plunged into his forehead and metaphysical head, and dragged the soul shard out of his scar. This prompted a second round of silent screaming by Harry as his will was temporarily removed from the equation, and the sheer force of over three dozen circles ripped the soul shard from its moorings, and cleansed it of Dark magic. Harry had included this precaution just in case Voldemort somehow pulled the shard back from the Land of the Dead. The circles used the last of their magic to then obliterate the soul shard.

Harry reasoned this many precautions would suffice. For now, at least. The boy, in body, man in mind, shakily got off his knees and to his feet. He checked himself thoroughly. If any ounce of doubt were to be cast on his own wellbeing, he would not bring Ron and Hermione back. As he thought this, his younger and older minds finally melded. Harry's vision greyed out for a brief second, and then he was back. His calculations and theories had been correct! His younger mind had cured the insanity of the old, and dare he say it but it seemed that the early cleansing of the soul shard had made his younger mind sharper, not dulled by the malignant influence of the Horcrux.

Harry marveled as he felt like his mind was not only intact, but better than ever. He mumbled to himself, "Now to fix the issue with my magic. There's some sort of block on my younger magic, and I need to _fix_ my younger body so the magical channels, the network and the core can handle my true magical power."

He looked up, eyes blazing with his Mage Sight, and then he looked down, down into the Earth's crust for the fabled Ley Lines. Thousands of miniature runic circles swirled within his bright green, almost glowing eyes. These circles were the reason he was as good as he was with runic magic. Well that and a fair bit of natural talent. And genius level intellect. And a mind capable of juggling hundreds of equations at once. Well, that was mostly the magic. No one had accused Harry of being modest in quite a while, least of all himself.

The boy focused, and with a faint boom, disappeared. This was the result of entirely too much messing with time and space. The first time he "Bounced" he had nearly given Hermione a heart attack. This skill had become highly necessary, as Voldemort could track Apparition, and essentially, Harry messed a little with time and space, and "bounced" off of another dimension, opening a hole within his own in two different locations, and using that bouncing to go from one hole to the next.

Hermione had thrown a fit at Harry casually opening and closing holes in her precious fabric of space-time. Not to mention he was _bouncing off of other dimensions_. Ah, he could hear her lecture now. He had only been twenty three then, and the world had not yet been screwed up so royally.

Back to the Ley Lines though. Harry glimpsed the closest Major Line, and bounced over to it, using a sequence of five runic circles to keep himself standing on the water. Sometimes he marveled at his Mage Sight. It might have opened the door to his runic knowledge, but the eventual application was all up to him. Plus, he was the only wizard alive that was capable of using so much magic. The only problem was that Voldemort not only had more magic, he had more experience. Hovering right over the Ley Line, Harry closed his eyes and focused.

* * *

For much of history, wizards, witches and druids have been tapping on the power of the Ley Lines. This was done primarily by druids building an immense runic circle, and then powering it up on certain holy days. These circles were nearly always centered above at least one Ley Line. The oddest thing to happen to a circle yet was Stonehenge. Most Ley Lines stayed static throughout the years, only changing with cataclysmic events. Well somehow too much beer had soaked into the Ley Line that Stonehenge crossed over, and the Line got drunk and ended up curving away into the earth, rendering that area almost magically dead.

The druids in charge were then evicted from their order for getting so drunk on the job that they made a _Ley Line_ go away. These druids thought it would be great to fire up the now uncharged circle with nothing but sacrifices to bring the magic back. Soul magic was and always has been highly unstable. Needless to say, the magical backlash did not make anyone happy, as it vaporized the druids, went back in time and created the Sahara Desert, and also knocked Atlantis and Avalon out of time. Miraculously, this _did_ bring the Ley Line back, but it meant that the wisdom of Avalon and Atlantis was now forever out of reach, as no one had any idea where or when the two islands had been sent, and no one was foolish/stupid enough to attempt to recreate such a botched ritual.

At any rate, most rituals merely tapped on the side of the Ley Line they were focused on, briefly or sometimes permanently giving the druid doing the tapping a boost in magical power, dependent entirely on which ritual was being done. This is how, despite going through multiple magical puberties, Albus Dumbledore still went ahead and underwent several power increasing rituals himself, ostensibly to keep up with Grindelwald. He and many others did only what was required and tapped on the side of the Ley Line, as if gently requesting more power. This was not a drain for the Ley Lines at all, and being sentient, they freely gave away the power to whomever asked.

Voldemort went a different route. He knew he would never be able to match Dumbledore in terms of sheer magic while being half a decade younger, so instead of tapping on the Ley Line, he figuratively whacked it. Well, the whacking is literal, at least with magic. This sort of forceful demand for power was also granted, as that particular Ley Line hadn't given anyone power in centuries, and giving wizards power is what ley Lines gossiped about, and that one had been made fun of for quite a while. It grumbled a lot at the next meeting when no one cared as it hadn't been a proper ritual.

Harry decided that even that kind of method wasn't drastic enough for him, as Voldemort had done that several times over his six decades of life. So instead of requesting or demanding power, harry submerged his own magic into the Ley Line's. This would normally be disastrous, as it would wipe away Harry's whole existence, if not for the multitude of runic circles he prepared ahead of time to keep his mind and sanity intact. With the help of that magic, he dissolved his body and created a new one, made from magic itself, and thus free of any deficiencies like the effects starvation had had on his body.

* * *

Harry dove into the Ley Line, having chosen a Major Line this time, thankful for the choice. His body was instantaneously disintegrated, and he swiftly held onto his memories, making sure to charge his magical network with as much magic as it could handle, and then five hundred times as much. He then rebuilt his body using that magic, making sure to charge his whole body with the energy, then extracted himself from the magical line.

Harry popped back out of the Ley Line, body glowing faintly before it settled back to his normal color, magical network now large enough to deal with and channel his formidable magical power. He looked sadly at his Holy wand, as he knew it was not equipped to wield magic in the quantities he now possessed.

"I wish I could've brought back the Elder Wand. Oh well, that would create too many questions." Harry mused that it was unfortunate he had no idea how to construct a wand, then, judging that 10 am was a good time, Bounced to Ollivander's shop.

He entered the store, and instantly spotted Ollivander. Thanks to his Mage Sight, anyone with over the standard amount of magic gave off a faint glow that only Harry could see, even when his Mage Sight was turned off. Ollivander glowed a very faint silver, which would have made harry raise an eyebrow if he had not schooled his expression. Somehow Ollivander was considered close to Mage class, and his magic was of the same type as Harry's, as Harry's own glow was a solid, bright silver. He would figure out what the colors meant at some point, as he was running on the assumption that silver was for Mage class. He might have to discover what it really was later.

"Ah, Mister Potter. I see you are visiting me again." Ollivander's breathy voice broke Harry out of his musings.

"Er, yes, Mr. Ollivander, I was wondering if there are-"

"Any other wands that you might be able to try, yes?" Harry looked askance at the man as he was interrupted, and nodded. Ollivander's eyes gleamed, and Harry's own widened as Ollivander revealed his Mage Sight, what looked like millions of triangles whirling inside of the old man's irises. Harry took a step back, now wary. His were the only set of Mage Sight capable eyes he had seen, he knew Dumbledore was capable of it but had never seen it, and he had no information on whether Voldemort even had it. For Ollivander to use it so casually…

"Yes, Mr. Potter. I have Mage Sight. I can tell you do too. May I say, welcome to the past?" Harry's arm jerked, and a beam of bright purple energy blasted out of his wand towards Ollivander, the man already knew too much! Harry gaped as Ollivander didn't even move as a bright Silver Aegis shield popped up and took the spell, and then disappeared.

Harry thought back at the Aegis shield, the most powerful magical shield in existence. It escalated in power from Bronze to Silver to Gold, and a nonverbal, motionless, and apparently _wandless_ casting of a Silver Aegis was unheard of. Even he and Voldemort had needed to use wands when using the Silver, and needed the incantation when using the Gold.

Harry did the only thing he thought viable, he dropped his wand and raised his arms high. Ollivander snorted.

"Oh, don't get theatrical with me, child. I am well aware of your Mage ability, and through it, I can infer your primary ability. Runic circles, not bad. If you wanted to, you could probably make be eat my own beard, and I don't currently possess one." The old man stalked over to Harry and handed him his wand. "Take that back child, you're going to need it. Surprised by my little trick, eh? Well, come back tomorrow and I might tell you how I did it, and how I know what I know. Go on." Ollivander made shooing motions towards the door, and harry needed no prompting, quickly fleeing.

He cast about with his eyes, hoping beyond hope that not everyone knew, but no one really seemed to pay attention to a little wizard child whipping about. A young witch even bent down to ask if he was looking for his Mummy. Harry kept from rolling his eyes and replied that he wasn't, before flouncing, er, stalking off. He ducked into a deserted looking alleyway before Bouncing to Hermione's house.

* * *

Harry chuckled at Hermione's pajamas, the bright pink outfit covered in little unicorns too adorable for words. Hermione, being a light sleeper, woke up to a strange little boy that looked like a homeless person chuckling at her. She promptly screamed for her parents.

This did not elicit the response she wanted from her parents, namely, having them come thundering up the stairs to help her, but instead made the little boy double over laughing. She looked about wildly for something to throw, and tried to unplug her desk lamp, but when she couldn't find the plug, settled for chucking her stapler, only to gasp as the boy caught it.

"Now, now, 'Mione, that's no way to treat your best friend. After all, I did come back in time for you. Well, for all of us, but mostly I wanted to see you and Ron well again. Screw Moldyshorts, may he rot in hell." The boy grinned at her, and Hermione wondered if crying would make the boy go away. She had no idea who this child was, but he babbled away as if she would have any idea what he was referring to. After processing the mini speech, she settled for throwing a pencil at him instead, hoping the boy would take the hint and leave.

Harry had had a nice bit of fun messing with Hermione until now, but having sharp objects thrown at him made him just a little upset. So he cast a hundred circles and used them to obliterate the pencil. He took in her wide eyes and pale face, and smirked, which, unknown to him, looked adorable on his eleven year old face.

"Why yes, I did just violate the First Law of Thermodynamics. Also, did no one teach you that it's rude to throw things at people you've only just met?"

Hermione had no idea how to react to a homeless boy insulting her, spouting nonsense, using magic and randomly violating the Laws of Thermodynamics. So she did what any reasonable little girl would do and passed out.

Harry frowned. That had not gone as expected.

* * *

Who/what is Ollivander? Do you know? Do I know? Does my muse? No idea, let's see what my mind has in store for us next.

I'm not sure if I should be giving warnings for POV switches or not, it seems to flow more when I don't.

Review please, the couple I've gotten so far give me warm and fuzzy feelings!


End file.
